And what difference does it make if the text isn't shown? It still takes just as long to boot, but at least this way you can tell what's going on, or at least that it's going on if it's too fast

The only problem I can see is if you have epillepsy.

But, hey, if you want it, do it! We aren't stopping you. Just like you aren't stopping me from doing whatever it is I feel like doing, even though it may seem pointless. Seriously, who cares if their computer screams out "Why do they always send the poor?!?!?" when it boots besides me? Nobody, that's who! So instead of asking Barry for a System of a Down Puppy, I make my own. Then I forget that I did that, and it scares my pants of when it boots!

FYI, the above is the eccentric raving of a sleep derived lunatic who ate too many cookies. Don't worry, though. I'll probably pass out in a couple minutes, and when I wake up at 7:00 am, I'll be well rested and ready to start planning Pizzapup! Good nigh........... *CLUNK* Ouch! Good night. *mumble grumble*_________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

Why complain? If it is just a few seconds, how does that affect your user experience.

If the boot messages go by too fast to be read, why bother putting them there at all? My choice would be to keep the boot messages and add the ability to step through them. At least then they would be useful for troubleshooting.

Quote:

Actually, I'm giving up, the effort given to these posts, can be better used in other tasks.

Suit yourself. I agree that there are any number of things that are more important. The boot messages don't bother me. All I ever meant to say was that if they aren't useful then why are they there?

All I ever meant to say was that if they aren't useful then why are they there?

Actually, they can come in usefull. Picture this: Your computer is booting. It wizzes through messages, but then it comes to a screeching halt. Now those messages that were unreadable are there, allowing you to see where you froze at.

Sort of like the milemarkers on the highway. Normally they are useless, but when you crash and burn, you can tell where you're at._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

Pizza, that is presently the only use for the boot messages, as far as I can see. Do you think that being able to step through the boot messages one at a time would be a useful capability to add, for troubleshooting purposes?

Just in case you didn't already know, and that's all I know. Just one URL.

I can see it now....A puppy that steadily grows a bigger afro until Puppy is fully loaded....._________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

Hell, I don't know, Blade. Is it kernel messages that show on the screen while Puppy boots, or the output of boot scripts, or a combination of the two?

As Pizza pointed out, if the computer hangs during the boot process the last message showing might help to figure out why. The boot screen text whizzes by so fast during a normal boot that I can't see any other reason why it should be there.

Rarsa, I'm NOT saying it bothers me, or that it should be removed. I definitely don't intend to add pretty pictures to the boot screen. I only want to make it serve some purpose, if I can figure one out.

My question is, would the ability to step through the boot program add enough troubleshooting utility to be worth the trouble of doing?

I'd be willing to tinker with it just for fun, but I don't have a clue where to start. Does the boot screen show where the program is located that controls the boot process and the messages that are displayed?

Pizza, the bootsplash website looks like it is mainly about eye candy. It doesn't look like it would be much help in modifying the boot program to single-step through it with the "Enter" key, but I admit that I don't know enough to say one way or the other.

Now the boot shows only about a screen and a half of very readable text. I'm trying to make it graphical.

Again, this was just curiosity. I don't see it being part of puppy as it requires an xorg X server. I used the new dotPup from MU.

Besides, right now I didn't optimize it for size or anything so it is using reams of HDD. and It requires to add a parameter to the grub kernel command, so people booting from livecd would not be able to use it.

Sorry for making you salivate... I know, I said that I would focus on more important things, but apparently a lot of people finds this important.

If you get to choose: Should I use my time trying to get apt-get and 1000 of slackware compiled applications to install in puppy or to have a nice boot screen, what would you prefer?

The more I see it I'm finding it's not worth it. Puppy loads so fast that the Graphic boot will just flash. Specially because it cannot run before usr_cram.fs is loaded as it needs libraries located there.

By the time usr_cram.fs is loaded, most everything has already been configured

So, to round-up this post and hopefully mark it "solved" I think that you can achieve most of what you want with the following:

- In a HDD installation that uses GRUB, just add the following to the kernel command.
(Only replace what is in bold, as your root will be in a different partition for sure)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda11 vga=791 quiet

- In a CD-ROM installation you will have to remaster the cd to start the kernel with those options.

That will show a nice Tux graphic at boot up and will 'quiet' all the kernel messaages. You will still see the init scripts messages.

I played with showing the init script messages conditionally and it worked, although to apply my method to all the messages I would require substantial time and thorough testing.

...in case there is a problem and the progress/error is shown, but if it works, why keep showing it if you don't have to?

[...]

Flash wrote:

I agree. It would be nice if the boot screen had some practical use. For example, for troubleshooting purposes...

This is why I think we should have something like most of the other distributions do and that is a file like /etc/rc.d/functions, which includes things like displaying text on the console with a bold attribute or by using another colour. As I mentioned elsewhere om the forum, some of the sections in Puppy's sysinit already show the green 'done' text when something's worked Ok... but maybe you do/don't need/want to know about it... I remember a bit of discussion recently about what to do with the 'bad sector' os something -style error being displayed for a disk... and wouldn't you want to know as soon as possible if your disks were on the way out?

Looking at a distribution like PCLinuxOS, they have the 'functions' script so that when some segment is completed in sysinit a message like [ OK ] is displayed on the console. ...or, as some others have described, a 'booting' screen can be displayed right throught the boot until X is started (or all the sysinit messages can be displayed by pressing F2 at the booting screen, a la PCLinuxOS, Morphix, etc).

I think this would be part of the joy of playing with Linux is to borrow ideas from all the distributions... and with Open Source, that is basically encouraged... isn't it!?

I hope that encourages you rather than scares you off
Also, that won't do anything about the kernal messages, just the innit scripts.[/code]_________________Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib

I played with showing the init script messages conditionally and it worked,

Pizzas, I also played with the script messages, my approach was different than yours in that at boot time it would ask if the boot should be verbose. The question would have a timeout so you can have an unattended boot.

Code:

echo "Do you want to see boot messages? (y/n)
read -t 5 VERBOSE

I would then replace the echo command for each message with my own function "conditionalecho". That function would conditionally show the echo messages

Code:

conditionalecho()
{
if [ $VERBOSE = "y" ] ; then
echo $@
fi
}

My first thought was a global search and replace. The problem with that is that there are many echos that are meant to populate other variables or to create scripts on the fly, those cannot be changed.

You have to consider also that work needs to be repeated again for the following release.

So, there you have it. I don't feel like replacing all those echos, but someone may find this ideas interesting.

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